


You Bleed, We Crawl Like Animals

by ginger_mosaic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Animal Therapy, Cats, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lokitty, Tissue Warning, Tragedy, mascara alert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 11:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3690945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_mosaic/pseuds/ginger_mosaic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint knows that the cat can’t really be Thor’s troublesome, long-dead brother. He knows that. And yet, he and the other Avengers find themselves wanting to believe it, if only for Thor’s sake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Bleed, We Crawl Like Animals

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago, and since then there have been a lot more Lokitty fics written, so I figure I ought to post mine eventually.

**I. Clint**

 

Clint was lounging on the sofa in the tower common room, surfing Stark’s billion TV channels without really stopping to watch anything, when Thor walked in. It wasn’t his usual mode of entrance (crashing through the ceiling, most often with his troublesome brother in a stranglehold of some sort), and that was enough to make Clint sit up.

“Hey, Big Guy, long time no see.”

Thor grinned back uneasily. It had been a few months. He was living with Jane in London, where she could do her research on deep-sea particles or subspace plankton or something. Clint was never really sure with her. Thor only ever came to stay in the tower when the Avengers had some sort of mission, and right now, they didn’t. The only people living in the tower now were Clint, Natasha, Bruce, and occasionally Tony, when he wasn’t taking up space in his dozens of other homes across the globe. Steve, Bucky, and Sam had their own apartments in the city, and they seemed to prefer them to living in a high-rise monument to Stark’s ego. Although now it was technically “Avengers Tower” and not “Stark Tower,” ever since the Battle of New York. Still, they all knew what it was. Clint wasn’t going to complain, though. It was better than barracks or the streets.

“Indeed, Agent Barton,” said Thor. “We are well met. Jane is attending a gathering of Midgard’s greatest physicists this week.” He grimaced and Clint noticed he was crossing his arms over his chest in an uncomfortable way.

“Cool,” said Clint, eyeing Thor’s blue plaid shirt. Something was wrong.

The door to the common room opened again and Natasha stepped through. Thor jumped and whirled around, and yeah, something was definitely wrong.

“Jarvis told me you were back,” said Natasha. Her eyes dropped to Thor’s chest and narrowed immediately. “What are you hiding?”

“Nothing,” Thor said too quickly. He shifted his arms over his chest and froze when his shirt let out a soft, high-pitched mewing.

Clint stared at him. “Did your shirt just meow?”

 

The cat was a pure, shiny black, like oil, and its eyes were a brilliant green. It was, by cat standards, a beautiful cat. It hardly even looked like a stray.

“I found him in the Ford of Ox a week ago,” said Thor proudly. Once they had gotten him to reveal what he was hiding in his shirt, he was actually quite delighted to share. Apparently he had smuggled the cat all the way from London to Avengers Tower, though _how_ he managed that feat, Clint would never know. The rest of the team had come over after Natasha called them to announce Thor’s arrival, and they gathered in the common room to see Thor’s new pet. “He was stray on the grounds. Jane said I could keep him.”

“He’s so cute!” cried Sam, reaching out to pick up the kitten. It squeaked and struggled slightly until Sam set it in his lap and scratched its head. As it relaxed, Clint silently agreed; it was a damn cute cat.

“Look at those eyes,” said Tony, leaning toward the cat. “Have you ever seen eyes that green on a cat?”

“Beautiful,” agreed Pepper.

“Thor just couldn’t leave him be,” said Jane, shaking her head, but smiling softly. “We’re lucky our apartment allows pets.”

“He’s a rascally little fella,” said Sam. The cat was nipping his finger lightly. When it finally got ahold of Sam’s forefinger, Sam wiggled it around, tugging the cat to and fro.

“Yes,” said Thor, still beaming like a proud father. “He reminds me of my brother.”

Clint snorted and dropped from where he had been perched on top of the couch near Sam’s shoulder. “Okay, not so cute anymore.”

“Wait, hold up,” said Tony. “You think this cat is your brother?”

“I do not!” protested Thor rather heatedly. “He just _reminds_ me of Loki.”

Tony squinted at the cat in Sam’s lap with new scrutiny. “He _does_ have green eyes.”

“And he’s biting my finger pretty hard,” admitted Sam. Bruce reached over to pull the cat away from Sam’s hands, pinching its jaw to get it to let go. Bruce was surprisingly good with animals. He tucked its feet into one hand and held it securely against his chest.

“Why would Loki turn himself into a cat and let Thor adopt him?” Bruce pointed out. “Doesn’t seem like his pride would allow for it.”

“Besides the obvious problem that Loki is dead,” said Clint.

A tense silence fell over them, and when he looked back at Thor, Clint wanted to kick himself in the face. And he was almost flexible enough to do so. While they all had their problems with Loki, who had made himself a name on Earth as a pretty reliable source of chaos, Thor still thought of him as his wayward little brother. His little brother who had died in his arms somewhere in space a year before, while fighting for the sake of the universe. According to Thor, Loki had died with honor. Clint wasn’t so sure, but he also knew how it felt to lose a brother who wasn’t always… well, _good_.

“Boltuna yazyk do dobra ne dovedyot,” muttered Natasha. He avoided meeting her glare.

“We could run some tests,” said Tony, and as he spoke, the eagerness in his eyes grew. “To see if it’s really Loki.”

“It’s not, obviously,” said Bruce, running a thumb over the cat’s head. Its eyes were wide, but it had stopped struggling, which seemed to be a point in favor of its being Loki. Clint was pretty sure that Bruce was the only one Loki really feared, after what the Hulk had done to him. They still had the Loki-shaped imprint on top of the tower, coated with sealant and covered with a plate of glass. Tony was proud of it, and whenever Bruce’s eyes caught on it, he blushed, but Clint could sense that he was pleased. Loki had thrown his science bro out of a window, after all. The Other Guy’s revenge must have been satisfying, at least a little bit.

“Yeah, but we don’t _know for sure_ ,” said Tony, standing up. “I mean, how many times has he ‘died,’” he continued, air-quotes flashing, “in the past? We should at least make sure he isn’t pulling a fast one on us.” Tony turned to Thor. “Did you give him a name yet?”

Thor eyed Tony warily. “Lykke,” he said at last.

“I propose we rename him Mr. Buttons,” declared Tony.

Bucky snorted, and Steve frowned. “What would that do?”

“Please, do you think Loki would tolerate being called Mr. Buttons?” Tony sauntered over to Bruce and lifted the cat from his arms. “Well, would you?” he asked the cat, holding it out under its armpits with its hind legs dangling in the air. “What do you say, Mr. Buttons?”

The cat only mewed in distress and Bruce stood up to take the cat again.

“Nice try,” said Bruce, moving to hand it back over to Thor. Thor took the cat with a grateful smile and held it close.

“I’m certain I would know if this cat were my brother,” said Thor. “I’ve seen his feline form before.” But Thor looked down at the kitten in his arms, and Clint caught a hint of doubt in his eyes and wondered what Stark had started.

**II. Bruce**

 

Bruce took his glasses off to rub at his eyes, and when he put them back on again, he saw a streak of movement in his peripheral vision. He turned on his stool, glancing around the lab. It could have been a trick of the light, or just the rim of his glasses, but he had the distinct feeling that someone was watching him. And as a man with an acute sense of these things—and paranoia, that too—he was pretty sure it had to be something.

After a few seconds of glancing around, however, nothing revealed itself, so Bruce shrugged off the feeling and turned back to the table. He was doing some calculations by hand. He didn’t care what Tony said; doing them by hand made him feel better. Tony’s computers could do amazing things, but sometimes Bruce just needed the tactile experience of pen and paper.

The sensation of being watched had nearly faded when he felt something move against his leg. He swung his legs to the side and looked down, but it was only Thor’s cat. It looked up at him and mewed, its wide green eyes fixed on Bruce.

“Hey,” said Bruce, pushing the stool back from the table. He leaned over to scratch the cat behind its ears. “How did you get in here?”

It mewed again and rubbed against his hand, and when it turned around, its eyes flicked up to something behind Bruce’s head. Bruce glanced over his shoulder and saw the air vent. Clint had been in here earlier; he must have left it open.

“Uh oh. A cat in the Hawk’s tunnels. You’d better watch yourself.”

Thor’s cat ignored Bruce in favor of walking in circles around his seat and rubbing its back against the stool legs. Bruce sighed and leaned toward the table to continue his work, but he didn’t get much farther before the cat leapt up onto the work table. Bruce glanced at it and reached over to scratch its head with his left hand while his right hand finished the calculations. While he worked, it wandered around the table, sniffing his phone and nudging pens over the edge, occasionally returning to Bruce’s hand to demand a head massage.

“Hey, is that thing bothering you?”

Bruce turned to see Tony strolling into the lab with a smoothie in one hand and something wrapped in tin foil in the other. As he approached, he narrowed his eyes at the cat on the lab table. The cat only pushed another pen over the side and looked up at Bruce, as though checking for his reaction.

“What do you have against cats?” asked Bruce, reaching down to pick up the pen. He felt a tiny paw on the back of his head, and when he sat back up, the cat’s large green eyes were fixed on Bruce and it had one front paw raised.

“Nothing,” said Tony, handing Bruce the tin foil package. A burrito. Bruce set the pen back on the table and ripped open the foil. “I like cats. I’ve met plenty of cats that I liked. I had a cat growing up. Used to sleep with me. Hated my dad. Loved that cat. But this one, I swear, when it looks at me, I can just tell it wants to throw me out a window again.”

The cat was indeed watching Tony like it was going to jump at him.

“Maybe because you’re not very nice to it,” said Bruce. He bit into the burrito. God, it was delicious. Tony was the best.

“I’m nice. I can be nice. I got you that burrito.” Tony ran a rough hand over the cat’s head, and it raised its paw higher to swat at his hand. “See, he’s trying to kill me. Aren’t you, Tutu Halfwit?”

Over the last three days, Tony kept trying to coming up with more and more ridiculous names to call Thor’s cat, to try to provoke Loki into revealing himself. Tony was sure that Loki wouldn’t stand to be insulted for very long, and Bruce had to admit that the idea had some merit. Loki’s pride was easily wounded; he always defended it to the very end. Still, through Mr. Buttons, Lacy Trousers, Fluffykins Doodlebrain, and Tutu Halfwit, Loki had not made an appearance.

“Cats are smart,” said Bruce. “He can probably tell that you don’t like him.”

Tony snorted. “And you do?”

“Well, he’s not an ideal lab assistant,” admitted Bruce, as Tutu Halfwit (great, now Bruce was doing it) pushed the same pen off the table.

“We are flooded with sub-par lab assistants,” said Tony. He picked up the cat, which meowed loudly, and when he brought it closer to his chest, it tried to climb over his shoulder. Tony held it in place and it dug its claws into his shoulder, clinging there like a prisoner trying to escape over a wall. “No use trying to escape,” Tony told it. “We always catch you in the end, you big, stupid, horned doofus.”

“If it really is Loki, do you want him on your shoulder like that as you insult him?” said Bruce, shaking his head and turning back to his papers.

“I’m not afraid of him. It’s like Phil said. He _lacks conviction_. He’s a loser of a second son. The failure of Asgard. The _king_ of failure of Asgard. ”

Bruce frowned, removed his glasses, and turned on the stool to face Tony. Tony was staring down the cat on his shoulder. It stared back at him. Their noses were almost touching. A tiny pink tongue darted out and licked the tip of Tony’s nose, and Tony flinched. Thor’s cat took the opportunity of Tony’s loosened grip to drag itself up onto Tony’s shoulder and jump down to the floor.

“Did you see that?” Tony whirled around to face Bruce, jutting a thumb over his shoulder at the cat, though he was no longer pointing at the cat because it had disappeared somewhere. “I wasn’t the only one who saw that, right? Jarvis?”

“He just licked your nose,” said Bruce, a little annoyed.

“He’s trying to be cute! To get me off guard!”

Bruce wasn’t sure about the _trying_ to be cute. The cat just had a naturally playful personality. Though the lick _was_ admittedly well-timed.

With Thor’s cat out of sight, Bruce went back to work. Tony sauntered across the lab, and Bruce heard him making noises, but he ignored it. Only when he heard a yowl did he look back up again.

Tony had found the cat and was trying to force it into the scanner they used for magic detection—invented in part by Jane Foster.

“Tony, enough!” Bruce stomped over and slapped the back of Tony’s hand, which startled him enough that Bruce could snatch the cat away. It struggled, but he held it tight and glared at Tony.

“Damn it, Stark, it’s just a cat,” spat Bruce. “Drop it before you get Thor’s hopes up!”

“I’m not—” But Tony stopped, looking shocked and then shamefaced, and Bruce turned on his heel and carried the cat to Thor’s rooms.

“This is a great cat,” he told Thor, and he hoped that statement would be enough of a hint that it was just that—a cat. It _wasn’t_ Loki. It just wasn’t.

 

No one could stay away for long—not when there was a _cat_ around—so they all gathered for dinner in the tower a few times a week. After dinner, Clint and Bucky settled in to play violent video games, which Bruce actively avoided. Mario Kart was one thing, but Grand Theft Auto? A little too much for his delicate sensitivities (as Tony liked to say).

As Lykke chased the red dot of Natasha’s laser pointer, Thor was beaming so much that his smile looked like it was going to stretch right off his face. It was the happiest he had looked in a year.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before,” said Sam, reaching out to tap the cat’s rump, “but I should totally get a cat for group.”

“Animal therapy is known to do wonders,” said Pepper from her seat on the couch behind them. Bruce nodded and took the laser pointer when Nat offered it. He hadn’t had a pet in a long time—not since the catastrophe with his dog, and Bruce tried not to think about that—but he had always loved animals. The Other Guy did, too, Bruce was pretty sure.

“Can we bring this guy to group?” asked Steve. He was sitting with Clint and Bucky, but Steve tended to shy away from the more violent video games. He loved survival horror, though, even if it did make him scream in a rather uncharacteristic high-pitch. There was a game controller in his lap, but it wasn’t connected.

“Oh my God, Thor, they would love him,” said Sam, turning pleading eyes to their resident Norse God.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” said Tony, speaking up at last. Bruce eyed him suspiciously. A silent Tony was a scheming Tony, and with the way he’d been acting today, that wasn’t a good thing. Tony didn’t disappoint. “I mean, putting a cat that is possibly Loki near a bunch of ex-soldiers? Doesn’t seem smart. What if he makes them his thralls?”

Clint flinched, but said nothing.

“That is not one of my brother’s abilities,” said Thor, and Bruce was sure he had explained this before. “That was the power of the scepter.”

“Still,” insisted Tony.

“What makes you think it’s Loki anyway?” asked Sam, who had never met the God of Mischief.

“There’s no evidence that it is,” said Bruce wearily.

“He’s a sneaky little bastard with unnaturally green eyes for a cat and—Look! Look what he’s doing!” Tony pointed to where the cat was currently using his sofa as a scratching post.

Natasha reached over and pulled the cat away from the sofa while Tony rambled on about destruction of property and biding time.

“Maybe I should throw him in my pool,” he mused, continuing nonstop from his ramblings. “He’d have to transform, he’s gotta have some sense of self-preservation.”

Everyone burst out at once, and Bruce forced himself to back up, sliding back behind the couch a little.

“No!”

“What the fuck, man!”

Even Clint and Bucky paused their game to glare at Tony, who looked taken aback by the reaction.

“Have care how you speak!” shouted Thor. “You will not threaten harm upon my tiny adorable creature!” Bruce saw his arm raise slightly, as though calling his hammer, but Jane put her hands on him, gently pushing the arm down.

“But—” Tony began, though his tone was less certain now under the glares of two super soldiers, two spies, a Norse God, a flight-capable ex-soldier, and two very smart, very resourceful women.

“Tony, no!” snapped Pepper. “God damn it, that’s it.” She stood up from the couch, towering over him. “I have tolerated a lot from you in this tower, but I will _not_ tolerate animal abuse. Whether it’s Loki or not,” she added fiercely when it looked as though Tony might protest.

Bruce didn’t feel that he could leave without attracting attention in the tense silence that followed. Finally, Tony’s posture slouched.

“Fine,” he said. “Fine. I didn’t want to actually hurt it. I just thought—”

“Oh, I doubt very much that you were thinking,” said Pepper.

Bruce looked around for Lykke and found that Jane was trying to wrestle him into her grip. The cat was obviously very uncomfortable, and Bruce didn’t blame him. In fact, he had the feeling he should remove himself from the situation. Now.

He stood up, breaking the spell, and the others looked at him.

“I’m going to lie down,” he announced.

Natasha narrowed her eyes. “Are we good, Banner?”

“I might need a Xanax,” he admitted, his mouth dry.

Tony’s eyes went wide. “Hey, Bruce, man, I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to lie down,” Bruce repeated, turning away and hurrying toward the door. He wasn’t sure how he made it to his floor, but the next thing he knew, he was lying face up on his bed.

He wasn’t sure how, but it seemed that they had all gotten attached to the cat, so much so that when it was threatened with harm, they all jumped to defend it. Probably because it was an innocent animal that had never done anything wrong. And wouldn’t that be funny if that was Loki’s plan all along? Get them to fall in love with his cat form so that he could take advantage—

But no, the cat wasn’t Loki. And even if it was, even if Loki did eventually reveal himself, Bruce thought, thinking of the way Thor loved both the cat and his brother, he was not so sure that they could do anything about it.

Or if he would even want to.

**III. Natasha**

 

“Just hypothetically, what do we do if it really is Loki?”

Natasha looked up from her book. Clint was playing with the cat on the floor of the common room. Fighting with it, really. The cat had its jaws on Clint’s knuckles, and Clint was gently trying to shake him off. This was how Clint played with cats.

She thought for a moment before answering. “Would you hurt a cat anyway?”

“No. But apparently Stark would.”

“He was only trying to goad Loki out.”

“Thor still won’t speak to him.”

“Would you, if he threatened your dog?”

Clint finally managed to shake Lykke from his knuckles and grabbed the kitten by the scruff of its neck. It squeaked unhappily until Clint turned it upside down in his arms.

“So what would we do?” he asked again, scratching under the cat’s jaw. It stared up at him with wide green eyes. Natasha would believe that Loki would put up with this, for some form of far-off revenge. He had put up with a lot in the past—being imprisoned in the helicarrier, mocked by them all, slammed into the ground by the Hulk multiple times—and still he had carried himself like it was all part of some greater plan of his. It was true that his pride was easily wounded—he would lash out at them, certainly—but no one could ever claim he was impatient.

Natasha shrugged. “There’s nothing we can do about it. If he’s gathering information, well… I sincerely doubt he needs to, anyway.”

Clint nodded solemnly, and Natasha hoped he wouldn’t dwell too long on the fact that he was the reason Loki knew so much about all of them in the first place. She had told him a hundred times that it wasn’t his fault.

“And if he tries to kill us in our sleep?”

Natasha smirked at him. “It’s unlikely that he’d succeed. _Lacks conviction_ , remember?”

Clint laughed and the cat wriggled out of his arms, jumped to the floor, and stretched. Natasha watched it. She knew about biding time and keeping covers. She knew how much one had to endure to get what one wanted. But it sounded like this time, Loki was truly dead. And dead was dead.

“Why?”

Clint frowned. “What?”

“What are you really asking?” she clarified.

He looked away and leaned back onto his hands to watch the cat wander around the PlayStation Bucky had left out, sniffing it curiously.

“I still hate him, you know,” said Clint at last. “But Thor loved the bastard. He killed hundreds of people, hijacked my goddamn brain, and Thor still loves him. I guess I’m still trying to figure out what that means.”

“I think you know what it means,” said Natasha, and Clint met her eyes. He quickly looked away again.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But maybe I just don’t want to, because it was pretty personal this time.”

Natasha smirked. “And it wasn’t personal when I shot you in the leg?”

He shrugged. “I tagged you back. We’re even.” Suddenly he leaned forward and grabbed the cat again. It yowled, but Clint didn’t let go, holding it up in front of his face and giving it a serious glare.

“If you really are Loki,” he said to the cat, “then you’d better think for a long time about the fact that you’re an asshole and your brother still loves you. Don’t you dare hurt him again.”

Natasha laughed, feeling relieved somehow. She didn’t like the idea of the cat actually being Loki; it was too easy for such a small creature to reach very small, secure spaces in the tower and overhear sensitive information. But she thought back to her conversation with Loki in the helicarrier, and what she had heard of him after from Clint and Thor, and it really made her wonder what the Trickster God had really wanted.

**IV. Steve**

 

The cat got along best with Natasha, for whom it seemed to have a grudging respect, but Thor loved it the most. Steve sat on the couch, sketchbook in his lap. He had been doodling some scenes from a movie he saw with Sam earlier that week—some old black and white horror film about aliens that Sam highly recommended—but then Thor and Jane had come in with Lykke. It was too much cute to leave undrawn.

“We should get it some catnip,” said Stark from his chair. He was fiddling with some gadget in his lap, which he usually only did in his workshop, but Steve suspected he had come up to hang out with the cat. Despite all his protestations to the contrary, Stark liked the cat, too. Or at least he wanted to keep an eye on it.

“What is catnip?” asked Thor. The cat was crawling up his back up to his shoulders. Thor leaned forward to make it easier.

“It’s this plant that makes cats crazy,” explained Jane, and at Thor’s frown, she continued: “I mean, they just really like it. They get really excited when they smell it.”

“I might have some in the lab,” said Bruce, and Tony raised an eyebrow. “It has some medicinal properties, too,” he continued rather defensively. He got up and disappeared for a few minutes. Thor continued to taunt Lykke with a feather, and Steve sketched out a picture of the cat on Thor’s shoulder. When Bruce got back with a small pouch, everyone leaned forward expectantly.

“It might not do anything,” Bruce warned. “Some cats aren’t affected by it at all.” And then he threw the pouch on the ground near Thor’s feet. The cat, still on Thor’s wide shoulder, looked down at the pouch curiously for a moment, and then jumped down to sniff at the new object.

They were not disappointed. Lykke immediately batted the pouch roughly and then chased it to where it flew. Soon he was rolling around wildly, fighting the pouch and leaping around. Thor laughed so hard he fell over, and Steve felt himself grinning. The big guy hadn’t looked this happy in a long time.

After a few minutes of laughing at the cat, Thor caught it, trying to scratch its head, but Lykke was still too riled up to sit still. He wriggled out of Thor’s grasp and jumped up onto Bucky’s lap. Bucky leaned back, grimacing and stiff, and only moved again when Lykke had jumped up onto his shoulder and then onto the back of the couch. Then he began to knead the couch.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Tony, rushing over to pull the cat’s claws off his furniture. “See? Destruction of property.” He leaned over to set the cat back on the floor, rather more gently than he had in the previous few days. When the cat first arrived, Steve had seen Tony _drop_ it unceremoniously, and it was a good damn thing cats weren’t all that fragile or Steve would have strangled Stark for it. Now Tony wasn’t too belligerent towards the cat. Even his nicknames had gotten tamer, settling for now on “Noodles.”

“Lykke, come here,” Thor called, reaching for the cat, but it ignored him and followed Tony on his heels to his chair.

“Git,” said Tony, flicking his foot out, but avoiding the cat entirely. Steve hid a smile behind his sketchbook as Tony sat down and Lykke immediately jumped up onto the armrest of his chair. “I don’t want you,” said Tony. “Go to Thor.” He reached over to pick up the cat, but Lykke jumped down from the armrest before Tony could touch him. He trotted away from Tony’s chair and stretched, his claws picking at the carpet briefly, before walking over to examine the PlayStation.

“Lykke,” Thor called again, and reached for the cat again, but Lykke dodged Thor’s hand and darted behind him. Thor reached around quickly and managed to grab Lykke around the middle. The cat let out a displeased yowl and Steve winced.

“Thor, let him go,” said Jane.

“I want to play with him,” said Thor, struggling to keep the cat in his grip as it writhed around in his large hands. Lykke’s claws shot out and Thor yelped and released him. Steve saw the cat dart around Thor’s back and then disappear into the hallway. Thor swore.

“I told you,” said Jane. “He didn’t want to play. Cats are like that. Sometimes they just want to be left alone. That’s why he always goes to Bucky.”

Bucky scoffed, and Steve laughed and turned back to his sketchbook. Since the cat was gone, there was nothing much to see; now he just had to draw.

“Why would he go to someone who hates cats?” grumbled Thor.

“Because people who hate cats leave them alone,” Jane explained. “If you smother him, he’ll just resent you.”

When Steve looked up from his sketchbook, he was shocked by how terribly sad Thor looked. He was looking forlornly at the doorway through which Lykke had disappeared, and it occurred to Steve that this was not the first time someone Thor loved had escaped from his grasp.

**V. Tony**

 

“I have one more test,” Tony announced upon entering the common room, without even checking to see if everyone was there, and he was not disappointed. The whole team was assembled around the centerpiece of entertainment that was Thor’s cat. They had the laser pointer out again, which was perfect. Tony could not have planned it better.

“No more tests, Stark,” said Natasha, shooting him an annoyed glare. She _would_ defend the cat; she was its favorite. He was pretty sure that whenever Lykke wasn’t sleeping with Thor and Jane, he was sleeping with Natasha. The damned cat had only visited Tony twice, which was unfair. If it was going to become the tower cat, it had to treat all of them equally.

“No, this one is good,” said Tony, and everyone groaned. “Trust me,” he added, and he stepped forward into the circle of chairs and sofas and held out his hand, upon which his last test sat underneath a towel.

“And what’s that?” asked Bruce.

Tony held up a finger for silence and then paused for dramatics before sweeping the towel away to reveal a tiny, golden, cat-sized replica of Loki’s horned helm.

“Ta da!” he said, and Pepper laughed.

“Is that what you’ve been working on all day?” she asked.

“Well, the specs were vague, but I’m a genius, so I’m pretty sure I got it to scale.” Tony turned to Thor and held it out for inspection. “What d’ya think, Big Guy?”

Thor just stared at the tiny helmet in Tony’s hand and then met his eyes, and Tony nodded and crouched down to place it on the floor in front of the cat. Bucky turned the laser pointer on the helm and Lykke chased it and smacked a paw on the front of the golden head piece, right between the two horns. Then the cat lifted its paw slightly and peered under it for the red dot, but Bucky had clicked off the laser pointer. They all leaned forward.

Lykke sniffed the helm and walked in a circle around it, and Tony almost yelled out “Eureka!” because he was _so damn sure_ that Loki was about to make a mistake.

And then Lykke chewed on one of the horns briefly before turning away from it. Everyone watched in silence as the cat walked around in circles, and Bucky clicked the laser pointer, and the chase was back on.

“Damn,” said Tony.

Thor picked up the small helmet and turned it in his hands.

“May I keep this?” he asked quietly.

Tony sighed. “Sure, Big Guy.”

**VI. Clint**

 

The whole thing was doomed from the start. They really should have seen it coming. They should have stopped him, should have told him more urgently that it wasn’t a good idea.

And, Clint thought as he stood on the sidewalk, watching Thor weep bitterly over the body of his cat, they should never have gotten so attached.

Earlier that afternoon, Thor decided he wanted to take Lykke to the park, saying that cats weren’t meant to be cooped up in a tower. So they packed up a picnic and went as a group to the nearest park, where Lykke chased butterflies around the grass and evaded the grasp of small, local children for a few hours, until he overestimated his own mortality and darted out to the street in an apparent fit of curiosity. Clint couldn’t exactly blame the cat; he got distracted by shiny things, too, sometimes.

A hand fell gently on Clint’s shoulder and he turned. Phil stood next to him, and gave him a sad smile. Natasha had called him when it looked like Thor was going to lose it, but so far, all the Thunder God had done was cry over his cat, Jane at his side, Mjolnir hanging from his hip uselessly, the small replica of Loki’s helmet dangling from a strap on the hammer.

“Jeez, it’s like he’s never lost a pet before,” muttered Tony from Clint’s other side.

“I don’t think that’s the point, Stark,” said Phil. “Doesn’t it always hurt when you lose someone you love?”

Tony scoffed and kicked at the sidewalk, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Whatever, I hated that cat anyway, it was stupid,” he said, stalking off with tense shoulders. Clint couldn’t muster the energy to roll his eyes. When the car hit Thor’s cat, his heart… God, Clint’s heart had stopped, and even now his stomach clenched and he remembered the way the stupid cat had played with the laser pointer and jumped on Bucky constantly and stolen Stark’s sandwich and hidden behind Natasha legs because it _knew_ she was the only one Stark was really afraid of…

“Oh, Thor,” Jane was saying. “Thor, I’m so sorry…”

“Lykke,” Thor sobbed, but to Clint it almost sounded like “Loki,” and his stomach clenched again.

“He really thought that cat was his brother,” Coulson murmured incredulously.

“Yeah,” Clint said, thinking that, in some way, they all had.

Or maybe, for Thor’s sake, they had all hoped.

**Author's Note:**

> Russian edited!
> 
> Болтуна язык до добра не доведёт  
> Boltuna yazyk do dobra ne dovedyot.  
> The tongue of a person who chatters won't lead to a good end.


End file.
